Business information Server (BIS) system is a product that allows users to design and control their own database applications without the need for advanced computer programming knowledge and skills. For example, a manager of a human resources (HR) department at a company may design a database application in BIS containing employee information such as an employee's name, an employee's company identification number, an employee's home address, an employee's home telephone number and/or the like. Once this information is stored into a database, a host of functions may be performed on the information such as sorting, searching, calculating, modifying, comparing and/or the like. Business Information Server software operates according to a client-server model in which a user of a client device sends a request to a server to perform one or more of the aforementioned functions. An administrator that may be coupled to the server controls administrative activities associated with serving the request. These administrative activities may include setting up default configurations, manipulating data files, or performing audit-related tasks.
Due to the number of users interacting with the server at one time, it may be useful to create a record of changes to or a back-up copy of a file's contents every time a modification is made to a file. One solution to tracking changes in a file or database is to provide an audit feature to write the changes made to the server into a back-up file that may be kept in an audit trail that is separate from the database. The audit feature is configured by the administrator, and when it is enabled, the copy of the file is stored in an audit trail. Conventionally, two audit trails may be configured. A first audit trail may be an active audit trail, while a second audit trail may be an inactive audit trail. When the active audit trail is filled to capacity, a process begins that deactivates the active audit trail and switches an inactive audit trail to an active trail to continue receiving back-up file information from the administrator.
While performing this pack process, the database is locked, and applications are not able to make any updates to the server. Consequently, the applications, and the users using the applications, must wait for the pack process to terminate and the database to be unlocked before continuing to access the database. The pack process may take a considerable amount of time to complete and cause unnecessary delay for the applications and users. This delay may be unacceptable when a user has limited time to perform a transaction in the database. For example, when a user is submitting updates to the server (prior to boarding a flight, the user only has a short amount of time to perform the update before boarding the plane and losing internet connections to the server. Thus, there is a need to provide a solution that allows a user to make updates to information through the server without incurring long delays during the pack process when an active audit trail is filled to capacity.